Essays

By Melanie Bitler
 * The Classroom Deputy**

My Dearest Deputy,

I love you, but sometimes you frustrate me. When you cop the attitude that being an officer is more important than being a teacher because you have to carry a gun, I feel hurt and angry. I value my teaching career as much as you do your law enforcement career. We share many job requirements; some might even call me a classroom deputy.

Our jobs have many of similarities. You patrol the streets looking for people to protect and serve. I patrol my classroom doing the same thing. The people you catch go to jail; the students I catch go to the office. You enforce the laws of society; I enforce rules of the school. I am the sheriff of my classroom.

We also deal with similar drudgeries in our work. I know you write reports for lawyers, judges, and colleagues, but I also have to compose reports for students, parents, and colleagues. Often you attend court on your day off while I attend before- and after- school meetings. Both of us take steps to recertify so we can continue to do the jobs that we love for our crappy pay. Meetings and recertification classes are just a distasteful portion of our jobs.

Daily routine tasks are not the only situations we meet head-on. You and I have to deal with emergencies that pop up. I realize you carry your gun and wear all the apparatus on your belt for this reason. I do not wear a gun belt but I often have to keep my wits on my waist and would not walk into the classroom in the morning without my tools. My voice is my siren. It informs students to learn or get out of the way so others can. We both bring our work home with us. A bag full of ungraded papers pages me to come to work instead of a piercing squawk box like you. I carry my emotions home with me also so teaching like your profession does not halt at the office door.

When you are the first on a scene, you treat injuries. I treat mental injuries and invisible hurts or slights. Cops give tickets as a way of preventing poor driving and bad accidents. Educators check items wrong as a way of correcting students and preventing erroneous habits and poor grades. By the way, grades are life and death for some students. Like you, I am required by law to report abuse. You inform social services and that agency takes the child from the home. I do that too, but I also see students in poverty and I arm them with knowledge. Knowledge, their vehicle to a better life, yanks them off the streets and out of the criminal mindset. Knowledge just might save their lives. At least I am steering them on a law-abiding path makes your job easier.

So although I do not need to carry a gun and admittedly do not deal with the urgent emergencies that you do, I still make a difference. I handle long term emergencies. I am not understating the danger that you work in. The memory of Matt reminds me every time you walk out that door that you might not come home. I just ask that you not devalue my profession. Remember that my paycheck contributes to our comfortable life and that I love what I do, too. Thus teaching is an everyday, ordinary emergency that requires a classroom deputy to do it right.

Your loving wife, The Classroom Deputy

By Melanie Bitler
 * Writing Overflow!**

I don’t teach English but I still respect the beauty of the written and spoken word. My chest puffs up with pride when I hit the metaphorical nail square on the head. When I find the exact wording that will emphasize my point or drive home my opinion I revel in the satisfaction of knowing a job well done.

I enjoy quotes such as the one that prompted me this morning about teaching being a matter of lighting fires, not filling buckets. Yet I don’t feel sparked. Since I’m only in my second week of class and the first full one, my lack of inspiration is a source of panic. Perhaps fatigue is starting to set in, or maybe my chaotic life preoccupies me. After all, I did have to borrow Raylin’s hair brush; I realized fifteen minutes into my drive that I had not remembered to comb my hair. My husband had to find my checkbook because my frantic search did not uncover it. Shot nerves created nausea and anxiety as autopilot switched on and I performed my morning routine somewhat incompletely. Could the stress of writing so much be an overload? This feeling is worse than being pregnant. I just might give birth to a seven-page paper!

At night my mind hops from a yacht of pleasure to a pontoon of adjectives and then leaping precariously to a dinghy of action verbs. I am so filled with the fear of falling in and drowning in this sea of words. Raylin mentioned she dreams of me writing eight page papers and her fleeing from my presence in disgust. Fortunately only my waking thought is consumed with writing; I have not yet begun to dream in pens and paper. When will this end? I spar with the idea of me being a writer. I am not a writer. I can’t be. I teach math.

Writing in math, isn’t that an oxymoron? Each day more papers and demos are thrown at me. This is a similar situation to when my brother taught me to catch a baseball. Either I would catch it or the ball would cream me in the face. I used to vividly imagine the stitching embossed in red across my forehead. Needless to say I learned to catch and I suppose I will learn to write and to teach writing. Just please could the ball not be pitched quite as furiously? I guess what I am trying to say is, “Light my fire, don’t fill my bucket until it overflows.”

To Be Literate Means. . . . . . to develop an early appreciation for the sound and ultimately the power of the written and spoken word; to sing songs and poems such as “Itsy Bitsy Spider” and Mother Goose rhymes—the songs, stories, and poetry differ from language to language and culture to culture, but the effect on the child remains the same. . . . to ask the kindergarten teacher to read the first-grade primer only to be told that it will be too difficult—the teacher gently but pointedly takes the offending book from the young learner’s hand not knowing that he read it before he asked her about it. . . . to build a tent made of a blanket, four chairs, and a desk; to put a lamp under the desk for reading; to spend hours upon hours upon hours underneath that tent, daydreaming about the lives of characters, wondering if parents would approve of this or that book even though Mom checked it out from the library—what was she thinking? . . . to complain that Dad always listens to NPR just when all the good afternoon TV shows are on; to pout on the couch, staring at the blank screen while absorbing the news and information from the radio with a secret pride of understanding: that Ireland consists of two separate nations; that Palestinians and Israelis share land even though they cannot do it peacefully; that President Nixon is in a hell of a lot of trouble; that the Equal Rights Amendment might change the country in incalculable ways; that people of color live in constant fear in parts of the country and suffer discrimination in all parts; that hostage takers are nearly impossible to deal with and politically dangerous; that people and corporations will poison the water and air and must be held accountable for how they treat the earth; that politicians can drown in the minutiae of their public and private lives. . . . to become frustrated with playmates’ abuse when one loses their games, and to recognize that such abuse never comes from books; to walk away from playground conflict and into a comfortable chair with a friendly book. . . . to rush through class work because one is allowed free reading time when it is complete; to be so drawn in by a book that one hears only the voices of the narrator and the characters in Narnia when called to join math or reading group around the table at the back of the room; to be marked absent while sitting only a few feet away, quietly surrounded by an isolating bubble of story, character, and imagination. . . . to learn to distinguish between facts and opinions and sales pitches; to avoid being duped by misleading advertising and mail-order offers. . . . to realize that even though politics and economics and trendy issues are not always interesting, one can nevertheless listen and read and think enough about the world to develop and support opinions and points of view; to know that social issues and issues of policy are important, even if they do not affect one directly; to recognize that there are individuals, communities, cultures, and societies in the world different from our own where people love, laugh, suffer, and die just as we do, which makes us not so different after all—and even if we are different from each other, we are still important to the world because we are all human. . . . to be able to defend and support one’s point of view in speech and in writing without resorting to personal attacks or unsupported expressions of opinion or value. . . . to develop a worldview that balances multiple and conflicting points of view; to understand that one’s system of beliefs is just that: a system that works, but not to the exclusion of other systems; to listen carefully to others and consider deeply and sincerely what they have to say. To be literate means all these things to me, the least of them and the most. Many of the world’s most literate people over the generations of humanity may not have been able to read or write. Rather, literacy is dictated by the standards and needs of the culture in which one lives and works, by the stories one tells, by the transmission of culture and tradition, and by one’s ability to tolerate and understand differences in other people and communities. We cannot isolate our literacy from the world around us because all aspects of literacy involve communication, and how we communicate dictates every facet of our relationships and lives. Steve Maack

__Sacred__ //Amy Morrow// The word “sacred” possesses so many different meanings for people. For some, the word “sacred” means “holy”, and for others, it means “untouchable”. Sacred means “alone time with no interruptions” for this writer. This mind vaguely remembers the quiet moments experienced before falling asleep at night in one’s “own” bed. Now the bed is full of 3 little, young boys who are not ready for their “sacred” time. When they become older, I am almost certain that they will appreciate their “alone” times. The moments which I spend with my sons are “sacred” in a different way. Those moments when my sons rush to jump in my bed at nighttime for "just one last snuggle", or when they say "Mommy, I love you. Will you play a game or read to me?" just as I am going for some quiet time. These are the times I wouldn’t allow anyone to take away from me. After all, they will soon be grown up and enjoying their own sanctity. Despite enjoying the moments spent with my children and husband, I still yearn for my “sacred” moments. Reading a book with no interruptions wherever my body decides to rest, soaking in a tubful of bubbles, feeling like I am in the middle of a lavender patch, as I reflect upon what the day had held for me, and what would need to be taken care of in the coming days, are some of these missed moments. Even the less subtle moments of laying in bed writing excerpts in my personal journal, or listening to my favorite artist have become events of the past. Becoming an adult and taking on the responsibilities (i.e. mother, wife, caretaker), people give away their “sacred” time unnoticeably, until someone says, “This is your sacred writing time.” Hearing the word “sacred” made me come in early to write for a chunk of time to get thoughts out on paper. As my pen flows across the paper, it is therapeutic. I have created another “alone time with no interruptions” for myself when I go to work out for 30 minutes, without being the workout “jungle gym” for my sons. The “sacred” times may not be a daily ritual for me, but with small, baby steps I find more and more time to revisit the quiet, reflective moments of the past. My life is full of love and adventure and I would not change it. Maybe as I introduce my sons to the concept of “sacred” times, they too will find their own solitude. For now, I cherish the minutes that allow me to compose and read without feeling guilt. After all, they are. . . . Sacred.

LOLA Mary DeVries For the past several months I have been struggling with the loss of a friend. The loss is a future one, but I am finding it harder perhaps to deal because of that fact. After finding the extent of her cancer, Lola has elected to let go and let God., and I can accept that but I am not ready to lose her.

Lola is one of those people a person has to work to get to know. She holds herself a bit in reserve, but once the barriers are crossed she is a treasure. Confidences are never betrayed, advice is truthful even if it may hurt a bit and loyalty is without question. She was the stop everyday when I was in the same school system. Whether we laughed or we complained in those minutes before school, those were the minutes that framed the day and made it possible on tough ones or more enjoyable on good ones. In fact she often is the pivot that turns bad into good even if it is by email or phone as I have changed schools.

Writing this I picture the photo of her with her two shitzus that I carry in my wallet. Those little dogs are her children. She adores them and they adore her. That photo radiates the love of pet and mistress. When Hamish the Scottie joined my home, she and the girls welcomed him with a gift bag and they exchanged gifts at other times. These loyal tail wagging companions will help her make this difficult journey and they will remain to help Steve, her husband, when it is over.

The last time I visited her, her pluck was there. “ I have not given up.” she told me. ”But I want quality days not quantity with no enjoyment.” In reality we both know what her decision means as the cancer is in her spine and other organs and lung cancer is vicious anyway. We do not refer to that fact, and I am glad that it was a good day for her. We laughed, and shared news as we have many times in the past. I am aware the next visit might not be so easy

I am also angry at the loss. After all she is a long time smoker. I want to shake her and say, “Damn it girl!” I am furious that research has not found a way to fix her. The tears that fill my eyes are both salty and hot with my resentment at the situation. I am unhappy that one of my daughters still smokes. She will be the second friend lost to this fatal blossom and that fuels the emotion. David fought the growth of the fatal flower for years but in the end it won. Lola may have only months.

So the anger will be part of my loss but placed on the back burner with tears I will not shed in her presence, and I will cope with the loss as I have faced others. The gift of knowing her will sustain me.

The Daily Trip Raylin Ledbetter In traveling everyone knows where they are going and they even have a map, but they never know what is going to happen along the way. To teach is to take a new trip each day. Teachers make all of the plans, trying to make it as interesting as possible for themselves and their students on the trip. They plan the main destination and all the side trips along the way. They even plan by what means they are going to get from one place to the other. Teachers plan where they are going to stay, linger, and cherish, and others that they are just going to skim by. After the planning, they pack their bags for this journey. They make sure to include supplies that will help them get to their final destination, items for emergencies, and something to help remember where they have been. Teachers are as prepared for this trip as they can be, and so everyone begins the journey, not knowing how they will get there, but knowing where they want to end. All of the side trips are accounted for, however, there are those incidences that happen that the teacher has no control over, but everyone learns from and enjoys. Those incidences only spice up the trip and make the lesson plans take new directions and new side trips. Some days they linger longer than expected at sights and others they skip through even faster than expected, so they still stay on schedule, somehow in the madness of it all. Everyone comes to the end of the trip, exhausted, minds reeling, yet satisfied and more enhanced by what we have seen and learned. The teacher and students must rest up their minds and bodies for the next day of traveling, exploring the next destination’s possibilities for learning and reveling in the excitement to come.